Here, the TikTok boss is put to the test in public – and draws the Zuckerberg card

TikTok boss Shou Zi Chew encountered deep-seated mistrust and rejection during a poll in the US Congress. During President Joe Biden’s five-hour hearing, Democrats and Republicans stressed with rare unanimity that previous moves to isolate US data from Chinese parent company Bytendace’s short video app weren’t enough for them.

Who Controls TikTok?

An important topic on Thursday was property.

“TikTok must become an American company with American values ​​and sever ties with the Chinese Communist Party,” Democratic lawmaker Darren Soto said.

Republican Marianette Miller-Meeks also stressed that the technology of other social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter was “developed in the US, according to US guidelines, under US data protection law”.

Shou Zi Chew, in turn, referred to the problems of US platforms with data protection, such as the Facebook scandal surrounding Cambridge Analytica.

Tiktok emphasizes that it is not a subsidiary of a Chinese group, as Bytedance is 60 percent owned by Western investors and the company’s official headquarters are in the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean. Critics counter that the Chinese founders controlled 20 percent thanks to higher voting rights and that Bytedance has a large headquarters in Beijing. According to media reports, the US government is demanding an exit from Chinese shareholders.

How will TikTok prevent China from accessing US data?

TikTok expressed disappointment with the conduct of the hearing, during which Shou Zi Chew was often interrupted by MPs and unable to comment on their allegations. The day was dominated by “political sensationalism,” a spokeswoman said. “The real solutions” were not discussed.

The TikTok boss had tried to name MPs with a plan “Project Texas” convince. US users’ personal information must be stored on servers in the US and access to it must be restricted and controlled. This also means that every update of the app is checked by the American software company Oracle before it goes to the users.

The senior Democrat on the trade committee, Frank Pallone, countered that the data silo plan was “simply unacceptable.” He believes “that the communist government in Beijing will control and influence everything they do,” he told the TikTok boss on camera.

Shou Zi Chew denied the allegations, but often avoided confrontation by offering to provide information later. When asked why the Chinese government announced that it wanted to prevent a forced sale of TikTok if Bytedance was not a Chinese company, he did not answer.

How does TikTok want to prevent users from being influenced?

In the app you can scroll from one short video to the next. A decisive factor for success is the software algorithm, which selects clips individually for each user and continuously adapts them to their preferences.

Among other things, it takes into account whether you watched a video to the end or immediately scrolled through. Ultimately, the software has a good idea of ​​the interests of the users. One of the concerns in the West is that this wealth of data could be misused.

At the hearing, Republican John Curtis asked if the data could be used to develop an algorithm “that might convince me to change my mind on a political issue.” Shou Zi Chew started with an evasive answer, but was cut off.

What is the background of the TikTok boss?

Chew, 40, is from Singapore, where he lives with his wife Vivian Kao and their two children. He graduated from University College London in 2006 and worked at Goldman Sachs for two years before moving to the US to pursue a master’s degree at Harvard Business School. Chew did a two-year internship at Facebook.

After his MBA, he became a partner at influential venture capital firm DST Global, where he spent five years facilitating investments in the Chinese company that became ByteDance.

He then spent five years as a manager at Xiaomi, a Chinese smartphone company, before being named CEO of TikTok in 2021.

The American public knows relatively little about Chew compared to Silicon Valley social media giants such as Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, according to AP News the expert Brooke Erin Duffywho studies social media platforms as an associate professor of communications at Cornell University:

Sources

(dsc/sda/dpa)